My Bones Will Keep

‘He’s no here.’

‘You mean he is on the other island?’

Corrie stuck out an obstinate underlip.

‘Gin ye’ll wait in the house, maybe he’ll come to you,’ he said.

‘You go and fetch him,’ said Laura. ‘I think we’d better wait here.’

‘No, no,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Let it be the house. Never mind, Mr Corrie. We have been here before. We can find our own way.’

‘Eh, well,’ said Corrie. ‘The door’s open.’ He repeated the words and added to them. ‘The door’s open and syne the spider will be walking in on ye.’ For the first time since Laura had known him, he chuckled, a gnome-like, ghoulish sound.

‘A bit of a sinister character, our friend, wouldn’t you say?’ suggested Laura when, having left Corrie at the boathouse, they were walking up to the house. ‘You don’t really think he was one of the men who pushed that man under the car in Edinburgh, do you?’

‘Reporter Grant’s insistence that the other man was employed by Mr Bradan makes me feel that we cannot dismiss him from our minds.’

‘And you believe that the other man was Grant of Coinneamh?’

‘I think it is likely. I cannot put it more strongly than that. It may have been Bradan himself.’

‘But Grant told us…’

‘I know. We are not bound necessarily to believe him. Well, Corrie has spoken sooth. The door is open.’

They stood in the passage while Laura shouted to find out whether anybody was at home. From the door which led to the kitchen Mrs Corrie appeared. She was wiping her hands on her apron and, clean though it was, it appeared to be no whiter than her face.

‘Save and presairve us!’ she cried. ‘Are ye in the flesh?’

‘If you’re asking whether we’re ghosts, I can tell you that we most certainly are not,’ retorted Laura. ‘May we come in?’

Mrs Corrie’s colour began to come back, but she still wiped nervous hands down her apron.

‘Ay, certainly. Come ben,’ she said. ‘But, gin ye’re for calling on the laird, ye’ve chosen a gey ill time, for he’s abroad the day.’

‘Yes, but he’s expected back,’ said Laura. ‘We know well enough where he is.’

‘Then ye ken mair aboot him than I,’ said Mrs Corrie, with something of her old spirit. Laura laughed, but Dame Beatrice said seriously:

‘Mrs Corrie, the Edinburgh police have been making enquiries into the death (supposed, at the time, to be accidental) of a man who was killed by a car. I believe they have questioned you about it.’

‘They speired at me was the laird ben the house that day.’

‘Exactly. You told them that he was.’

‘It was the truth. All day, from sun-up to sun-down. He was here, and he had an Inverness gentleman with him and Corrie and I were called in to put our names to a paper.’

‘Corrie and you? Both of you?’

‘I dinna ken, Mrs Gavin, what way you would be surprised at that. Mind you, I’m no very sure, but I thought – ay, and Corrie thought – that the paper was maybe the laird’s will.’

‘At what time did you sign it?’ asked Dame Beatrice.

‘What time? Well, now, the tea – I infused the tea at four o’clock instead of five, because the gentleman wanted to get the Inverness train at Freagair – the tea was cleared at a quarter to five and before I could turn round and wash up the things I was brought back into the room and Corrie was called from splitting kindling wood beyond the hen-house, and we both signed the paper.’

‘At soon after a quarter to five?’

‘At very soon after a quarter to five. It wouldna have been five minutes after I carried out the trays.’

‘I see. Thank you, Mrs Corrie,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Oh, one more question: do you happen to remember what day of the week it was?’

‘The police asked me the date, and I remembered that it was the twenty-third.’

‘Which day of the week was it?’ asked Laura, reinforcing Dame Beatrice’s question. ‘Don’t you remember that?’

‘It wasna the Sabbath, anyway. Folk up here dinna do business on the Sabbath.’

‘So you remember that it was the twenty-third, but not which day it was.’

‘For the best of reasons. I mind it was the twenty-third because that was the date on the bottom of the paper.’

Laura laughed. Then she said, ‘It might interest you to know—’ she began.

‘Or, rather, to tell us,’ broke in Dame Beatrice, ‘whether the present laird, Mr Macbeth, was on Tannasgan at the time.’

‘Him? Oh, ay, he was here.’